Reno 911!: Miami

“You don't have to thank us,” says Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon), the sheriff's lieutenant with a penchant for converting his uniform pants into cut-off shorts so he can spring into action “like a law-enforcement cheetah.”

That exchange, which takes place following the climax of the big-screen debut of Comedy Central's
Reno 911!, pretty much says it all. This is workaday stuff from the
Cops
-channeling comedy troupe that traces its origins back to the MTV sketch show
The State.

There
are
laughs here — the deepest due to hilarious cameos courtesy of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Paul Rudd — but the overall levity level seems more in line with a TV movie. I mean, why does the chicken cross the road? No, really. Why?

Anyhow, the plot as scripted by co-stars Robert Ben Garant and Lennon (the writing partners behind
Balls of Fury,
Let's Go to Prison
and
Night at the Museum
): Not-so-fresh off a four-day bus trip from Reno to Miami to attend the American Police Convention, Washoe County's finest are informed they aren't actually registered for the event. The deputies are forced to check into a motel so seedy (“the kind of place you'd go for a good old-fashioned rapin'” as Dept. Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenney-Silver) describes it) that the desk clerk is convinced they're in town not for a cop convention but a “suck fest,” but this actually turns out to be their saving grace.

When they show up at the convention center the next day, they find out that every other law enforcement official in town in quarantined inside because of a bioterrorism attack — leaving the crew that Dangle affectionately calls “the dumbest group of people I've ever met who aren't legally retarded” to patrol the streets of Miami.